Following are the questions regarding certain tasks required for making a simple animation. The animation will consist of both 2D and 3D work with sound effects and the duration will be between 5 to 10 minutes.

- Can Blender do basic 2d animation like flash. For example- making animated flow charts, graphs and labelled diagrams. For example animating the graph shown
in this link.... http://www.pfr.co.uk/image-library/PfR-Main-Site/graph_2.jpg

- Can Blender be used as a texture creating tool like photoshop. For example editing still images for making textures.

- Can Blender be used for recording sound for animation. For example- adding narration to the animaton.

I hope the questions make sense and any help will be greatly appreciated.

Yes, either with the compositor or the VSE. I think you'd probably be wanting the VSE.

- Can Blender do basic 2d animation like flash. For example- making animated flow charts, graphs and labelled diagrams. For example animating the graph shown
in this link.... http://www.pfr.co.uk/image-library/PfR-Main-Site/graph_2.jpg

It's definitely possible but you would most likely be able to do it faster in a more 2D oriented program.

- Can Blender be used as a texture creating tool like photoshop. For example editing still images for making textures.

Yes, but depending on the level of detail you're going for it might be easier just to use a 2D paint program.

- Can Blender be used for recording sound for animation. For example- adding narration to the animaton.

If you mean recording sound through a mic, not that I know of. If you mean adding a soundtrack to a video clip, yes, you can do that in the VSE.

HTH

kujuranand

08 August 2012, 08:53 AM

Thanks for the help JamesNZ......there are few more questions that I wanted to ask....

- I have used premiere pro a lot.....but am totally unaware of VSE....so my question is how much time will it take to learn basic compositing in VSE and also what is the basic difference between there workflow.

- this is same as above...i know flash very well...what is the difference between the workflows of flash and bender when doing 2d animation.

- I found a photoshop alternative for texturing known as GIMP...it is really nice and easy and is capable of doing simple texturing works.

- can you suggest any free software for sound recording.

Thanks again for your reply....please help me out with these questions also, it will really accelerate my learning and work.

Thank you.

roofoo

08 August 2012, 02:52 PM

For sound recording I recommend Audacity.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net

JamesNZ

08 August 2012, 02:49 AM

- I have used premiere pro a lot.....but am totally unaware of VSE....so my question is how much time will it take to learn basic compositing in VSE and also what is the basic difference between there workflow.

I've never used premiere before so I'm not sure what the difference would be. Here's an introductory tutorial for it: http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/12/13/working-with-the-video-sequence-editor/

- this is same as above...i know flash very well...what is the difference between the workflows of flash and bender when doing 2d animation.

I guess the biggest difference would be the 3D aspect, e.g, you would have to model everything. Though from the flowchart you linked to I don't think it would be that difficult, just possibly a bit tedious depending on the number of objects you have to animate. You may want to have a look at Freestyle (http://freestyle.sourceforge.net/), which is basically a 2D line renderer which you can integrate into Blender.

- I found a photoshop alternative for texturing known as GIMP...it is really nice and easy and is capable of doing simple texturing works.

Yep, I use it too. You could say it's the open source alternative to photoshop :p
Not sure about audio recording, I've never got into it all.

HTH :)

hvanderwegen

08 August 2012, 10:57 PM

For 2d animation, check out this article:
http://www.albinal.com/wp/2011/12/2d-in-blender-2-6-tutorial-part-1/
http://www.albinal.com/wp/2012/02/2d-in-blender-2-6-tutorial-part-2/

The author has produced 2d animations for tv.
http://www.albinal.com/wp/animation/

If you are accustomed to Flash: while Flash is very much frame-based, Blender is more curve/object based. It is much more powerful for animating than Flash, but rather more complicated to learn (although I think Flash is not exactly the most intuitive tool in the world either).

And definitely learn how to use the node-based compositor - it can easily compete with Photoshop in regards to pure image editing and compositing, but again: completely different workflow: nodes versus layers. For compositing a nodes-based workflow generally is preferred (Nuke, Fusion,...), and combining this with Blender's 3d/2d motion tracking tools is absolutely brilliant. But harder to get into. Once you do: sky's the limit, really.

kujuranand

08 August 2012, 04:50 AM

one more really IMPORTANT question I wanted to ask was that how much time will it take to learn 3D ANIMATION(modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering) and COMPOSITING(VSE) in BLENDER ? (I have done all these things in other softwares and am new to blender).

Thank you.

JamesNZ

08 August 2012, 11:28 PM

one more really IMPORTANT question I wanted to ask was that how much time will it take to learn 3D ANIMATION(modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering) and COMPOSITING(VSE) in BLENDER ? (I have done all these things in other softwares and am new to blender).

Depends on how much time you put into per day/week, but if you've already learned how to do those things in other software then it's probably just a matter of learning the interface. Which can take a while ;) It took me about 4 months to get to a reasonable state of proficiency in Blender, though I only spent 1-3 hours on it per day.

I highly recommend you take a look at blendercookie.com and blenderguru.com, both of them have top-notch blender tutorials.

HTH :)

kujuranand

08 August 2012, 04:57 AM

Thanks James, the UI of blender is really hard to get used to. I will surely go through the websites you mentioned.

Thanks again, your replies were really helpful :)

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